According to the Chicago Tribune, Little Village Academy a public school in Chicago has banned children from bringing their own lunches from home, unless they have a medical condition or food allergy. The reasoning behind the ban – to encourage healthy eating. I don’t know exactly what the public schools in Chicago are serving for lunch, but I have seen some of the foods being served in the public school system and I wouldn’t consider them healthy!
I have a question, what if your child is vegetarian, vegan, eats only organic, or doesn’t want to throw away milk containers, plastic ware, napkins and other food packaging everyday? The answer, if you child goes to Little Village Academy, the only choices that your child has is to eat school lunch or forgo lunch altogether.
To look at this from the school’s prospective for a moment, I can understand that many parents don’t pack their children a whole, nutritious lunch. And I have witnessed children who open their lunchboxes to find Crustables, chips, candy bars and soda. In these cases should the schools beable to tell parents what their children should be eating by banning that type of lunch brought from home?
What are your thoughts?
Whose responsibility do you think it is to ensure that our children are eating a healthy lunch?
Do you think that the government should have a say to prevent children from bringing junk food
for lunch?
Or do you think it is up to the parents to decide how their children should eat?
Would you continue to send your child to a school that dictates what they will or won’t eat for lunch?
Do you want my two cents? Maybe, rather than banning homemade lunches, this Chicago public school should ban children from bringing junk food to school. Just a thought.
photo credit Ben+Sam
